When How You Look Really Matters

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Monthly Archives: January 2019

My husband and I recently visited the Christian Dior exhibit at the Denver Art Museum. When I told him I wanted to go, he raised one eye brow and asked, “Really?” My emphatic “Yes!” convinced him that arguing was futile. I can’t blame his hesitancy; I’m in fashion and so, of course, I would be interested in seeing over one hundred dresses and suits designed for women over several centuries. The rationale for him to go was less compelling.

The crowd at the museum, filled with anticipation, looked a bit like a New York fashion show. This was definitely not the typical, casual Denver crowd. One woman, in particular, caught my eye in a sporty, form fitting white dress with matching dressy tennis shoes, complete with gold accents. Her ensemble was made complete with wide rimmed white glasses. Men in dress shirts, slim pants, sleek shoes and scarves held the arms of beautiful women dressed in all black. A whole group of fashionable women laughed and talked in high pitched voices, their pink, streaked and bobbed hair styles bouncing as they turned heads to chat.

With the first exhibit, Christian Dior’s classic women’s suits in black captured my attention. The structured fabrics tailored just perfectly to accentuate the curves of a woman’s body, and the impeccable tailoring still fashionable today, made me wish I could wear one. From these first suits to the last dramatic dresses, I wandered from exhibit to exhibit in complete awe of the beautiful workmanship and creativity expressed again and again through the decades, and always with careful attention in how to best flatter the female frame.

My favorite dresses were in a grouping of floral inspired gowns dedicated to Christian Dior’s sister who he named his Miss Dior perfume after. One beautiful gown had hundreds of hand sewn flowers that peeked out of delicate and flowing organza so that as you walked around the dress, you could see yet another flower you hadn’t seen before. The art work and craftsmanship were inspiring. The most surprising piece of art work at the exhibit was a Salvador Dali bust of a woman with a french baguette on her head. As it turns out, Dali and Dior were friends and partners in trying to challenge the traditional views of women, art and fashion.

As we walked back to the car in silence, I asked my husband what he had thought of the exhibit. “Fashion really is art,” he mused, pausing. “I really didn’t understand that until I watched ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ you know, how much fashion actually influences our society.” “Yes, honey. ” I responded. “I’m so glad we went.”

It’s a new year…the time to move out the old and move in the new! Perhaps you’ve already made a few New Year’s Resolutions. I like to start the year by getting organized. I find, when I feel organized, I feel more in control and less frazzled.

One of the first places to get organized is your closet. There is nothing worse than starting the day out with a harried rush to put together an outfit and putting on and then taking off several outfits before you decide on one. You can make getting dressed in the morning a breeze and a pleasure with a few simple tips on closet organization.

First, each year you need to remove the items you haven’t worn in a year. So, if you didn’t do this at the start of the winter season, do it now. You will be tempted to talk yourself out of removing items, so don’t second guess this process. Don’t worry that you will have to get rid of anything. Instead just separate out all of those items and lay them somewhere out of eye sight. We will get back to this pile later.

Second, separate your tops, bottoms and dresses and put them together. This will make putting an outfit together so much easier, and you will begin to see holes in your wardrobe that you never noticed before.

Third, within your tops, organize them so that the short sleeved tops are together and the long sleeved tops are together. If you have both summer and winter in your closet, also separate them by season so the summer are together and winter are together. Do this same thing with your bottoms. Put your leggings, slacks, jeans together by category and season. Last finish with your dresses. Put your sleeveless, short sleeved and long sleeved dresses together and separate them by season.

Fourth, color code each section. Do you remember learning how the memorize the colors of the rainbow with the ROYGBIV acronym? It stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Put each section, for example short sleeve tops, into this color order. Keep the hues together: pinks go with reds, turquoise with blue or green depending on the color, etc. Finish with your neutrals in this order: white, tan, brown, grey, black. When you are finished, you should have each section organized by color.

Fifth, now let’s tackle that pile from step one. First go through it and separate out any item that is out of date, pilled, stained, torn, un-hemmed, etc. These go in the donate pile. Then, consider each remaining item carefully. If it is a classic piece, like a black blazer, keep it. If you love it and can’t part with it, keep it one more season, but if you haven’t worn it when you repeat this process next year, donate it.

Now, stand back and admire all your hard work. You now should be able to clearly see what you have and what you don’t. What do you notice. You probably can quickly see that you tend to buy certain colors. You might notice that you are really short on blouses but have a ton of pull over tops. Or you may see that you need some more long sleeve tops. Perhaps you have too many jeans. When your closet is organized, it will talk to you, and you can be a smart shopper in filling in holes rather than just buying because you love it.

The other benefit to this process is ease of putting outfits together. Now, when you choose your slacks for your work day, you can go to your jacket section and choose one that matches and then to your shell section and choose a coordinating shell. No more searching through an unorganized mess.

If you’re feeling really industrious, why not do this with your purses and shoes too? Believe me, it is worth the effort!